We discussed the widely-reported/hyped ‘discussions’ News Corp was supposedly having with Microsoft Bing about ‘de-listing’ News Corp sites from Google (yeah right) earlier.

Personally, I think the parasite description fits. Same with tapeworm. Some of my friends take offence at such descriptions, and even deny them. I think he’s just calling a spade a spade. Get over it.
A rose by any other name.

But now, just a few days later, this twitchy move from Google:

Google caves in to Murdoch after ‘parasite’ attack

Rupert Murdoch and his executives have repeatedly bad-mouthed Google as a “tech tapeworm” and a “parasite”, guilty of “false gospel” and, according to the media mogul himself this week, “theft”. That war of attrition is having an effect.

After the drip, drip of abuse, Josh Cohen, Google’s senior business product manager, has announced a change in policy that will go some way towards closing a loophole that threatened Mr Murdoch’s plans to charge for the online content of his newspapers, including The Times and The Sun.

Google said it will allow publishers to limit the number of free news pages users can access per day.

The change means that Google News will become less effective as a back door way of reading news articles produced by websites that normally require a subscription.

Internet users have found that by repeatedly using Google’s “First Click Free” feature, they could continue to sample content that news providers wished to charge for. Under the new arrangement, users of the aggregator will be redirected to a payment screen after accessing five articles from the same publisher on the same day.Read on…

Methinks Rupert learned all he needed to know about ‘thinking out loud’ as an effective, um, encouragement to weaker minds from Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher who used his channels for exactly this sort in disinformation and intimidation effort. When it works, it’s almost mind control. (Getting a bit too hot in the kitchen, Google?)

News Corp and their ilk won’t be happy till they own Google … or have destroyed it. IMO.